DATABASICS Time & Expense Blog

Expense report receipt capture best practices

Managing receipts within expense reports has never been simpler with automated expense report software. Capturing receipts is literally a “snap” with these receipt management best practices:

Expense report receipt capture best practices

Create a standard for what information you need. Once employees understand exactly what information you need, you can begin to get organized. Start by considering what kinds of data you need to collect about the expense, like date, vendor name, vendor type, expense type, total amount, and the kind of receipts that you will accept.

Beyond this, you might also consider what information the receipt needs in order to constitute a real receipt. For example, would you accept this napkin as a receipt?

Probably not. Avoid this situation by making it clear exactly what kind of information you need from the receipt so that employees can comply with that requirement.

Accept digital receipts.Another best practice is to allow pictures of receipts to be submitted in lieu of the actual paper receipt. You can also accept PDFs and even emails of receipts.

When pictures become an option, it’s easy to store and track receipts with a quick snap on your phone.

Get a system with OCR (optical character recognition).An expense software provider that uses OCR allows you to just take a picture of the receipt and let the system fill in the blanks for you. All you have to do is make sure that the auto-fill is correct and hit submit.

Leverage email receipts. Some employees will commit expense report fraud because they know that their approver is overwhelmed with other tasks and doesn’t have the time or patience to go through every expense for every employee. They’ll use this knowledge to sneak in expenses and seek reimbursement.

Then, these emails are converted into PDFs and stored in a Receipt Repository (or other storage area for your receipts). Then, when it’s time to submit your receipt, it’s easy to find it in your repository and attach it to your expense report.

Report on missing receiptsAt the end of the expense reporting process, your provider should provide you with the tool to perform reporting and analytics on which expense reports were missing a receipt. These are good opportunities to look closer at the expense report and look for possible fraud.

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